The Texan in the White Hat; an interview with Jim Hightower

The Texan in the White Hat; an interview with Jim Hightower

By Steve Brown

OpEdNews.com

If America has ever been in need of a progressive populist, it may well be right now. That's where Texas author, radio commentator, columnist and public speaker Jim Hightower comes in.

Hightower is a soft-spoken guy in a white cowboy hat who sticks up for his country using plain talk and common sense.

But don't let his manner deceive you -- Hightower is as sharp as a tack with a nose for rooting out corruption and a spine for confronting those who place greed and power before the good of the country.

I recently joined Hightower for a chat. Hightower is on the road talking up his book, Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time to Take It Back.

He is currently working on a book called The Top 10 Reasons to Vote for George W. Bush, due out prior to the November elections.

While his politics may lean toward the liberal, it would be a mistake to place him among the ranks of partisan bushwhackers -- the important thing to remember about Hightower's politics is that he is a man by, for and of, the people.

Steve Brown: You talk about America as a kleptocrat nation, but when you talk about theft, you're not just talking about money, you're talking about ideals and what we are as Americans.

A guy came up to me at an art gallery in Austin a couple of years ago, shortly after Bush had been in office. He recognized me and we made a little chit-chat. Then he clenched my arms rather anxiously and looked me in the eye as though he was seeking confirmation of something that he feared, and he said, 'They're changing America, aren't they?'

That struck me as exactly right. They are. They're changing America. It's not just a matter of the demise of the middle class, as horrific as that is, not just about jobs going off shore or environmental rules being upended to make more money for polluting interests. They're actually going after the American ideals, the reason our country exists, which are the ideals of egalitarianism, seeking to supplant that with their notions of plutocracy and autocracy.

We're a nation that, rather proudly, I think, for 225-odd years, has been striving toward that possibility of egalitarianism. We've been expanding that initial premise of democracy that was put down by Jefferson, Madison and the rest. And while we haven't gotten there, at least we've been trying, and that's the big shame in my view of what the Bushites and the weasly Democrats in Congress have brought upon us.

They say we can now abandon that goal of idealism, that we can pursue the good fortunes of the few at the expense of the many.

That's some kind of country, but it's not America. It's not why we're important as a nation historically.

What kind of theft are we talking about. Are we being robbed blind?

It is relentless. Most presidencies are in service at one level or another to corporate and moneyed interests, elite interests. Yet most earn the benefit of the doubt from the rest of us because they have some amelioration of their willingness to pursue the avarice of the elites. Even Nixon " Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, he signed the bill creating the EPA, the bill creating OSHA. Whether for purely political motives or pure motives, it almost doesn't matter. But " he gave something.

These guys now, you just know there's no benefit of the doubt for them, you just know anything they do is tied to enriching the few at the expense of the rest of us " These people are warped.

You talk a lot about the interrelationship between government and big business. Are we approaching a technical definition of fascism?

Yes. Certainly the definition that Mussolini drew. He said fascism should properly be called corporatism. This is the merger that happened even in Germany with Hitler.

We focus on the horror of the Holocaust, but the real rise of Hitler was fueled by the corporate interests becoming the state interests. They were willing for these moral perversions to take place, not unlike what's happening now.

Are they going to be able to get away with that, to distract the population?

That depends on what the Democrats do, and I have a little more confidence this time than I have in the past several election cycles that maybe the Democrats are actually going to stand up and not allow that to happen.

Why is that we're not seeing this in the mainstream press?

Oh golly. You're not the same thing. You're the Mark Twain media. They're the conglomerate media. They're not media at all.

Are they really more sales?

Yeah, media is a product, the equivalent to rides at Disney World and the other things they sell.

It's not about news, they don't give a damn about news. It's about packaging a product. And having that product return not a nice seven or eight percent profit, as a news corporation used to ask for, but now at 25 to 30 percent return every year.

Real journalism requires staff, people going out spending time and doing this and that, to write one article, one three-minute piece or less on television. You can't do that if you've got to have a 25 to 30 percent profit.

The only way you can make that profit is if you resort to entertainment news and infotainment type of news coverage. That's what anyone who watches television news these days knows.

It seems the thinking has gone from Americans as citizens to Americans being consumers, more on the level of cattle at the lot waiting for slaughter. How did we get down that road, and how do we get back? Some of us are not all that comfortable being cattle.

I think more and more, people are not. I think there's a consumer rebellion " It's in the interest of the corporate powers to define you as a consumer, because that's a very passive role, rather than a citizen which is a cognitive, dissonant troublemaker - a human being.

Do you think we can survive as a country of consumers?

No. Obviously not. If you don't make anything, if you don't participate in democracy, if we're all working at the mercy of corporate whims and making Wal-Mart wages, then there's not a prayer we can sustain our economy. Despite all the BS about knowledge jobs, information jobs and all that, those are the very jobs right now they're shipping off to India, Russia, Pakistan and elsewhere.

[Corporations are saying] this is the only way we can compete. Well, excuse me, but when did the role of America become to help corporations compete? You're supposed to compete on your own. We give you enormous subsidies. So, if, as they are now saying, that corporations have no responsibility to workers, to communities, to our country, then fine, let us take them up on that and we will withdraw all our subsidies, tax breaks and the regulatory giveaways that they now enjoy. Adios, chumps.

Isn't it shortsighted for corporations to act like they're in a race to the bottom as far as wages, working conditions and benefits? What happens when we get to the bottom?

Yes. What's at work here is a corporate imperative " that demands enormous returns every quarter. Not just every year, but every quarter.

So the CEOs come in, and they're human beings, but on the job they have to set all that aside because the only motive of a corporation is how do I get my stock price up and an adequate profit to make the investors happy. That requires literally a 100-percent focus on that bottom line and nothing else.

If that requires, as it always does, shortcuts on what you do to workers or to the town or to the air and water, what you do to consumers, what you do to avoid paying your fair share of supporting this country, then that's what you've got to do. And that is what they do.

So, they don't look beyond the next quarter, much less beyond the next year, five years or 10 years down the road. It could be totally destructive to their company in the long run, but they have to do that.

Are we beyond the point where most Americans are going to want to take back their role as citizen?

No, I don't think so. I think there's a huge anger there. Anxiety, angst, anger, you know, all the 'A's come into play here. And I'm finding that personally when I'm traveling around " from mid-August last year to mid-December, I went to 60-something cities in the country. I was getting, to me, astonishing crowds, 500 to 1,000 to 1,500 people at these events. And they were not turning out because the book had a picture of me in red underwear on the cover, but because they want to get together and meet and talk about what's going on.

The kind of turnout I'm getting, I've talked with Molly Ivins, Michael Moore, [Al] Franken, Paul Krugman and all of us who've got books out that went to the best seller list, they're having the same thing, getting two or three times the crowds we were getting two or three years ago.

So, the only people getting crowds to their book signings aren't just Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity?

They've got their own TV shows that sell their stuff, and they've got a right-wing network that's very clued in that the progressives don't. Despite our disorganization, I think we're catching up.

My book made the best sellers list and I had no national network that covered the book, no morning show, none of the magazine shows, no NPR coverage, no Washington Post, New York Times, L.A. Times reviews, nothing. It got on that list because we had an inkling, based on past experience, that this wasn't going to come our way.

If you assail the establishment, chances are the establishment is not going to back your book. So, we developed this guerrilla marketing campaign.

We can wring our hands that the conglomerate media ignores us and trivializes us, but the truth is we actually have a network, any component of which is actually small, but you take it as a whole and we're reaching tens of millions of people. We're not without media power.

Congress doesn't seem to relate well to regular people.

Congress is a little irregular, if you think about it " How many people who are typical Americans making less than $50,000 a year, are sitting " in the Congress of the United States? How many people enjoy Cadillac coverage health care, which every member of Congress gets? How many people enjoy the job security of a member of Congress, which has a 98.6 percent reelection probability, greater than Soviet Russia used to produce?

America is made up of bartenders and cab drivers, shopkeepers and farmers and school teachers. How many of them are in Congress?

We have a Congress and a government that is so tied in to corporate elites because they themselves are either of that class [or are trying to be]. I believe half of the 2002 newly-elected members of Congress were millionaires, so it's not that they hate us, it's that they don't know us any more and so there's no connection to any sense of reality we're experiencing. Their reality is so different from the rest of us, and as a result of that, we have nobody participating, essentially, in our elections.

So, how do we get them in tune with the American people?

There's stuff on the grass roots level that is in total rebellion to what Bush represents and the Democratic establishment represents. They can't see it yet, but the Democratic candidates have sensed that and have tapped into that.

Even if we're going to have a moderate establishment figure as Kerry, even he has gotten the gospel and has been singing some of the chorus and is picking up some of the rhythm that's going to cause some other people to go vote this time that otherwise wouldn't have.

The media establishment, the political establishment, the corporate establishment, they still want to pretend this isn't happening.

How do you define a patriot?

A patriot is somebody who stands up for the values of America, which is economic fairness, social justice, and equal opportunity for all people. That's what the hell we stand for.

It's our Pledge of Allegiance - liberty and justice for all. Emphasis on the all. Anything less than that is self-serving jingoism, and that's what we have disguised as patriotism today, and most offensively disguised as the USA Patriot Act. It would make James Madison, John Adams and maybe even Alexander Hamilton just upchuck.

Do you think this is becoming well known among the American population?

The interesting thing about issues like patriotism and the USA Patriot Act, is that those things immediately cross the convenient political lines that have been drawn for us all. So you'll find anybody that considers themselves vulnerable and outside the elite mainstream saying, 'Wait a minute, they're talking about me.'

That is a maverick streak that is almost an inoculation within the American people. As soon as we hear some of those things that were said, the hair goes up on the back of our necks.

In my view, they have over-reached. They are so nutty and so extremist, so fundamentally autocratic, by which I mean they are anti-democratic, they don't like democracy. I think they hate it. George W. himself does.

How come those of us outside of Texas, all we would hear about George W. Bush was that he had a reputation for working with people?

We kept trying to say to the media, Texas is not the national political scene. In Texas, Democrats are conservative. Of course Bush could get along with them. Overwhelmingly, Democratic legislators in our state are somewhere between corporate funded to corporate holders " So it's very easy for a corporate governor, which he certainly was, to say 'I get along with the Democrats too.' Well, of course you do, 'cause corporations own all of you.

Look at Washington now ... They're basically saying we are the majority, we rule, and you go sit in the back room and suck your thumb because there's nothing you can do about it, we'll basically run over you.

They don't seem to exactly play fair. Is the Bush administration taking dirty tricks to a new level?

They have, and it's not just a matter of dirty tricks, it's a matter of attitude. They do not seek consensus. They don't care anything about consensus. They have an ideological agenda and they intend to ram it through.

This is a president who did not win the popular vote. This is a president who has zero mandate. From the very get-go, they launched an extremist agenda to the shock of the Democrats in Congress who still haven't recovered, to the shock even of the lobbyist world, who couldn't believe their good fortunes.

Democrats like Clinton would get in and say we've got to get along and compromise, we'll make our proposal but we'll accommodate them - it's about what's best for the country. These people have an agenda and a particular moneyed constituency that they are going to serve. Period.

That is now expressed through the Bush White House, but also through the likes of Tom DeLay, the majority leader of the House who is the most powerful member of Congress, period. This guy is just completely loopy. He is eaten up with corporate ideology, right-wing and religious ideology and considers himself God-sent to impose a biblical government on our country. This guy is Newt Gingrich on Viagra.

Isn't it a fairly small step from there to a loss of our rights as Americans?

That is a loss of our rights. It's not a step - you are there.

They seem to be maintaining an incessant plausible deniability.

They're trying to maintain that. They're assuming people are completely obtuse and are not paying attention or don't give a damn and I don't think that's true ... I think they are bleeding votes every time they do something like that.

What do you think we can look forward to between now and November?

I hope, and I think, a pretty aggressive campaign. I think we can expect all kind of wag the dog things and code red alerts on terrorism between now and November.

I'm pumped up by the enormous turnout at the Democratic caucuses and primaries so far. And people are ready. This is what the pollsters can't measure - the intensity of the opposition Bush has generated among labor people, environmentalists, gays and lesbians - among a lot of Republicans, military families, for example, who are appalled by his extremism.

I know you're writing a book on reasons to vote for Bush, but do you think there's a chance of him going the way of his Dad?

I think he's a one-term president. I really do.

We don't have a government, we have this fiefdom run essentially by money and lobbyists. The Bush administration's ultimate expression of that is this is not a president being of service to corporate interests, these are the corporate interests. They have actually moved inside, they are now running the government. This is not America.